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ID:
143030
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| Summary/Abstract |
Looking back today, it is difficult to assess the state of the Middle East in summer 2014, before fighters from the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) poured across the thinly guarded Iraqi–Syrian border and quickly seized a huge chunk of Iraq. To a certain extent, the chaos that had gripped the region since the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011 was beginning to settle. Syria’s civil war continued to rage, but Egypt’s experiment with Islamist rule had run its course, and the United States and its P5 partners were on the way to a breakthrough in nuclear diplomacy with Iran. But the ISIS blitzkrieg into Iraq signalled the emergence of a new force in the Middle East – a hybrid organisation that combined terrorist tactics, military precision, religious ideology, and technological and bureaucratic innovation.
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| 2 |
ID:
144105
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Kurdish issue has been a problem for the Turkish Republic since its founding in the 1920s. With the onset of the Syrian conflict, that problem, from Ankara’s perspective, has taken on a new dynamic and become larger and more complex, because the Syrian Kurds have emerged as an important new actor. This has sounded alarm bells in Ankara about the establishment of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey’s southern border. Meanwhile, the collapse of the peace process between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has sparked an upsurge of violence and a resumption of attacks against Turkish security forces that pose a serious threat to Turkey’s security, and to regional stability more broadly. Meanwhile, the military success of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has sparked a major debate between Turkey and its Western allies, particularly the United States, over what should be given the highest priority: the defeat of ISIS, or the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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